MLPV2 Users Tutorial

Introduction

MLPV2 is a system that provides a menu to select poses, used in furniture. It can be built into a product, or it can be a self-contained "engine" that can be added to other objects.

To use it, you click on the object, which presents a blue menu popup, allowing you to choose poses to enjoy, or to control MLPV2 features. If you select a pose, it rezzes "poseballs", which you sit on.

First Use

The first time you use your MLPV2 product, it may need to initialize itself. Click it. If you get a menu; fine: it's ready to go. Otherwise, it will spend some time pulling itself together; just wait until it says it's ready. Sometimes you may need to click it twice to get it started. (Sorry; this is an SL bug.)

Normal Use

• Click it to get the menu
• Select a pose. Poseballs will appear.
• Sometimes poseballs will be hidden; if you don't see the number of poseballs you expect, try a different pose.
• To use a poseball, right-click it and select "sit" from the pie menu
• A prompt will appear on the screen asking for permission to animate you; click "Yes" to accept
• To change positions, just use the menu to select a different pose.
• When you're done, you can do any of the following:
  • use the SL viewer's "Stand" button, but sometimes this may cause you to jump a bit
  • If the MLPV2 menu has a STAND button, you can use that to avoid this
  • use the MLPV2 menu's STOP button, which will unseat everyone sitting on one of the product's poseballs

Use the STOP button to make the poseballs go away and put the product into "standby" mode where it causes less lag but is always ready to use.

Use "OPTIONS -> Shutdown... -> Shutdown!" to completely turn it off, minimizing lag. Before it can be used again, you'll have to start it back up as described in "First Use" above, and ordinarily, only the owner can do this.

A note about the poseballs

There is no need for a hide or show command, as there is with individual sets of pose balls: these poseballs show themselves when needed, and hide themselves when not!

Poseballs are created by the MLPV2 system whenever they're needed. If you delete one, you can use the STOP menu button and then select a pose and it will reappear. They're not precious, so don't worry about them. Also, note that the creator of the poseball is *not* the creator of the furniture or the poses.

If a pose needs adjustment to fit your avatar, see "Adjusting Positions" below. If you simply move the poseball, it will revert to its original position when you choose the pose again.

If you remove the MLPV2 product while poseballs are visible, they will automatically disappear in a few minutes, or you can delete them yourself.

Height Adjustment

Sometimes all the poses are too high or too low for the furniture item. To fix this, use the "OPTIONS -> HEIGHT" menu. Choose any pose and adjust the height up or down (by the given number of centimeters) until the poses look good. This affects all poses equally.

The height adjustment is stored in the object's Description field. If you clear this or change it to something that's not a number, the height offset will revert to zero.

Adjusting Positions

• Choose a position as described above
• Sit on a poseball, along with any other participants.
• In the menu, select "OPTIONS -> Adjust Pos"
• You'll see that all poseballs get transformed into semi-transparent beams -- these are what you adjust.
• Right-click the beam for a poseball you want to adjust. From the pie menu that appears, left-click the Edit choice. Colored arrows will appear at the center of the poseball.
  • Drag the colored arrows to adjust the position
  • Hold the Control (Apple) button and drag the colored circles to adjust the rotation
• If you goofed up and want to abandon changes to a pose, you can select it again, or stop adjusting by selecting "Adjust Pos" again.
• When you're satisfied, you can use "Save Pos" to save the position, or you can choose another pose (which will automatically save the position).
• When you're done adjusting poses:
  • Be sure to save the current pose (if you've changed it and want to save it) using "OPTIONS -> Save Pos".
  • Use STOP if you want to quit, or
  • Use "OPTIONS -> Adjust Pos" to stop adjusting but remain in the pose.

IMPORTANT NOTE: MLPV2 will remember your adjustments, but will forget them if it gets shutdown or if you reset the scripts.  See "Save positions to notecards" below to avoid this.

Saving Positions to Notecard

• Use "OPTIONS -> DumpPos". The product will chat all of its positions.
• Copy the text between (but not including) the "----------------------" lines.
• Paste these lines into a notecard called .POSITIONS

• Right-click the MLP Product, choose edit. In the edit popup, select the "Contents" tab.
• Find the notecards whose names begin with ".POSITIONS". (There may be one or more.)
• If you like to be careful, drag these into your inventory as a backup. Then, in the object's contents, delete all but one (usually, .POSITIONS).
• Paste what you copied above into this notecard, replacing its contents completely.
• Save the notecard.

The .POSITION notecard is re-read whenever the product is reset or restarted. This can be necessary after a "stack-heap error". For more information, see the MLPV2 User's Reference.

Props

Some of the animations will rez prop objects, such as cusions. If there is an pose that you'd rather this didn't happen with, note the name of the pose. Edit the .PROPS card inside the MLP product, delete the line for that pose, save your work, and restart the MLP Product using "OPTIONS -> Shutdown -> Pos Reset". ("OPTIONS -> Shutdown... -> Restart" will work too, but it will reset the menu too and take longer.)

You can adjust the position of props to suit your avatar or furniture, using a method similar to "Adjusting Positions" above. Use "OPTIONS -> Adjust Props"; adjust the prop, and either choose a new pose (which saves automatically) or save using "OPTIONS -> Save Props". Save to notecards using a method like "Saving Positions to Notecards", but use "OPTIONS -> Dump Props" and notecards begging with ".POSITIONS".

ACCESS CONTROL

The Owner of the MLP Product is the only person who can do the following:

• initial startup
• shutdown

This is a limitation of the MLP script used as the engine, and can't be changed.

To allow guests to use it when you're not available, use "STOP" rather than "Shutdown!"

By default for most products, all users are allowed to use poses, but only the owner is allowed access to the OPTIONS menu and to adjust poses or turn posename chatting on and off. However, you can restrict access to the pose menus to owner-only or group-only, by editing the notecards that begin with .MENUITEMS (there will be one or more of these).

• Wherever you see ALL next to a menu name, you can change this to GROUP or OWNER.

Landlords may wish to set the OPTIONS menu to allow GROUP access (rather than OWNER), so that renters can adjust poses. They will not be able to save them to notecards, and a reset will restore the original positions, for subsequent renters.

See also: ## What about group-owned land ##

HELP!

Q: In my inventory, my MLP Product says "no modify." So how can I edit the notecards, etc? A: Second Life permissions are somewhat primitive, and misleading at times even. In your inventory, the MLP Product object is showing as "no modify" because it has animations in it which are no modify. If even one item within an object is "no modify", the whole object will show misleadingly as "no modify." In truth, however, when you rez the MLP Product, you will see that you can edit it, change the texture, rename it, edit the notecards, etc.

Q: Sometimes, I click the MLP Product to start it up, and then when it's started and I click it again to use it, I get asked if I want to continue because [someone's name] has just selected the menu. A: Yep. We've seen that from time to time. Just click "Yes" to continue.